Template Version: @(#)sac_nextcase 1.68 02/23/09 SMI
This information is Copyright 2009 Sun Microsystems
1. Introduction
1.1. Project/Component Working Name:
EOF pcelx
1.2. Name of Document Author/Supplier:
Author: Garrett D'Amore
1.3 Date of This Document:
04 December, 2009
4. Technical Description
pcelx is a closed source driver (with a supporting closed source variant
of the GLDv2) intended to support 16-bit PCMCIA ethernet cards from 3com
(the 3Com Megahertz line of PC card devices.)
These cards were most often 10 Base-T only devices, or 10 Base-T with a
modem interface (the modem interface being supported by a different driver
-- pcser). There were some 100 Base-T cards produced, however, they
are limited to a maximum throughput of 20 Mbps.
The 16-bit PCMCIA standard is very similar to ISA in some key respects, and
suffers from significant performance limitations as a result. For example,
it is entirely PIO based, lacking any form of DMA. It is also limited
by the bus performance of PCMCIA itself. 16-bit PCMCIA has maximum bus
performance of 20 Mbps.
We do not believe that there are any mainstream portable computers produced
in the past decade that have had 16-bit PCMCIA support without also having
32-bit Cardbus support. (Such systems were generally limited to less
than 512 MB of RAM.) We therefore believe that, owing to the larger
memory requirements of OpenSolaris, it is unlikely that anyone will have
a system running OpenSolaris or SXCE with a pcelx-supported card, and which
is yet unable to support either a Cardbus NIC (quite a few cardbus
options are supported by the "afe" driver) or a USB NIC.
Given all this, we believe the time is ripe to remove the pcelx driver from
Solaris.
6. Resources and Schedule
6.4. Steering Committee requested information
6.4.1. Consolidation C-team Name:
ON
6.5. ARC review type: FastTrack
6.6. ARC Exposure: open
